


Wake Me Up

by ez_cookie



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Time Travel, basically wow if older married shuake was suddenly dumped in the past and forced to relive trauma, interrogation room scene but older selves are plopped back in, would that be fucked up or what?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:22:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29914782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ez_cookie/pseuds/ez_cookie
Summary: Goro Akechi is 32 and living in domestic bliss with his husband when suddenly he is violently warped back to the past... where he finds himself in the body of his teenage self, holding a gun to the forehead of his only love.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 12
Kudos: 167





	Wake Me Up

In his relatively quiet, domestic life with his husband, Goro hardly found himself in situations where he felt heart-stopping déjà vu to what he politely referred to as “back then” in his head for his own peace of mind. But it couldn’t be avoided entirely. He had an aversion to politicians barking out platitudes on television, turned away from every Big Bang Burger he saw on the streets, and could never really shake the feeling that he was being watched –– by Shido, by the yakuza, by a malevolent god. These ghosts of “back then” were pervasive, but manageable. While these reminders lingered in the back of Goro’s mind, they were just specters. They couldn’t do any real harm to him.

Nightmares were different. Even if he was sleeping peacefully in the real world wrapped in Akira’s arms, the damage his delusions… no, _memories_ did was all too real. Goro dreamed about the dark blood of shadows coating him from head to toe as he slashed and clawed like a mindless animal. He dreamed of another Goro Akechi, a false one created by his father, whose words were too honest and whose face stretched in all the ways it shouldn’t, looking less like a human and more a thoroughly abused figurine. But most of the time, he dreamed of Akira, a cold, featureless room, and a gun. 

Goro hadn’t held a gun since he was eighteen and too young to be so comfortable with that sort of weapon, but in his dreams, it always felt familiar, like it was made to fit in his hand. Sometimes he shot that guard he couldn’t even remember the face of, sometimes his memory skipped to a silencer against a forehead framed by dark bangs. An untouched forehead he would put a bullet wound into. It seemed that no matter how aware Goro was for one of these dreams, he was never able to stop the shot, dispose of the gun, or even call out to Akira. He tried, every time, to fight it. But his only hope to spare the teenage boy was to have Akira, his Akira, wake him up before he could pull the trigger. He was a slave to his own memory, his own mistakes. 

This was another dream. A particularly vivid one that happened suddenly, and during the day. In one moment, Goro was holding a kitchen spoon, frowning intently at a pot of miso soup he was trying desperately not to mess up as his husband grasped him affectionately from behind, keeping a close watch. Now, he was holding a gun, staring down the long silencer at the younger version of his only love, gloved finger sitting on the trigger like a cat about to pounce. He could feel the sick grin that was stretched across his face, smell the smoke coming from the barrel from the bullet that had already been fired at the guard. Akira looked at him blankly, the horrific cocktail of drugs in his bloodstream robbing him of full consciousness. It was too horrible. Goro’s arm trembled, and, even though he knew nothing would come of it, he willed himself to throw the gun away and run to Akira.

The gun left his grip, sailing across the room and discharging a bullet with a muffled _bang._ Instinctively, Goro leaped towards Akira, not so much hugging him as covering him with his body, wishing desperately to shield him. From the stray bullet. From those goddamn cops who had done this to him. From himself. Goro’s heart pounded as he listened to Akira’s breaths underneath him. Goro didn’t move from his position but felt like he was choking on the very air he was breathing. He’d never been able to change the scene before. If the sight of his love, dead on the table, his beautiful youthful face desecrated, didn’t wake Goro up immediately, his own feet would march him out of the room without delay, where he’d walk forever down a colorless hallway until he woke up. But this time, he stayed, and Akira was breathing beneath him.

Getting his bearings, Goro spared a glance to the side at the guard he suspected was lying in a pool of blood. The body was there, but as soon as Goro looked at it, the body disappeared in a puff of black smoke. _A...cognition,_ Goro’s brain supplied.

That was right… in reality, he’d shot two cognitions and walked out none the wiser. That meant that this wasn’t Akira. The real one was… 

Frantically, Goro stood up straight and felt around the pockets of his old school blazer for his phone. That ugly red and black app stared menacingly back at him from his phone screen, and Goro felt he might be sick as he tapped it and was met with the chipper voice of the navigator informing him he had returned to the real world. 

Maybe it was the fact that his dreams never were so kind as to remind him that he hadn’t really murdered Akira, and in truth had never encountered him at all. Maybe it was the way he’d been able to throw away the gun, the way he’d had command over his limbs to jump at Akira protectively and fix his face into something that matched the despair he was experiencing. Something clued him in to the fact that this dream was different, but the old yet all too familiar feeling of his stomach lurching as he shifted between realities was proof enough to Goro that something was very wrong. This dream was too different.

When Goro opened his eyes, the scene hadn’t really changed, but he could tell that he’d entered reality. The air was thinner, it was _quieter._ The Akira in front of him was sporting all the same bruises and the same unfocused eyes, but there was some imperceptible quality to him that made Goro know that he was the real deal. This Akira, this beaten, broken Akira, felt like home. A home that had been emptied and burned to ash. 

Goro removed his leather gloves. Damn them. Damn them and all they stood for –– his image and his detachment from the world. He balled his hands into fists, squeezing until his nails dug painfully into flesh. Goro’s breaths grew shallower and more rapid as he realized with growing dread that this nightmare really _was_ different. It was real. 

He didn’t know how. The Metaverse had been erased for years, and he wasn’t doing anything unusual at all mere minutes ago. He could guess why though. So he could be punished. It always, somehow, seemed to come back to that. 

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was Akira. He leaned over the metal table without thinking and grabbed onto Akira for dear life, burying his face in his shoulder and letting out a quiet series of sobs into it. Akira’s body trembled underneath him. Akira was frightened, but he was _alive._

“Akira…” Goro said weakly. He was shaking too, harder than Akira seemed to be. “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry…”

“Goro?” Akira rasped. “Is that you? Why… why are we back here?”

Goro hugged him tighter, feeling hot tears slipping out of his eyes as he grasped at Akira’s blazer for dear life with his clammy hands. 

“I’m getting you out of here,” Goro said. “No one’s going to hurt you. I promise… I promise, okay? If… if this is real, then fail-safes are coming. We need to leave.”

“You’re… right…” Akira slurred out. “We… we have to finish the soup…”

Goro startled, drawing back from the hug. This wasn’t just any Akira, it was _his_ Akira, back here in 2016 with him. Goro would have been comforted if the idea of his love being _here, now_ wasn’t so terrifying. Akira’s survival had been nothing short of a miracle last time around, and those cops could come back, or worse, one of Shido’s other “cleaners”. It was too much, and Goro needed to scream, to cry, to rip out his hair and wish with all his heart to be sent home to the life he’d fought so hard for. But Akira came first. Goro had to hold it together, even through his growing panic attack, and he needed to carry Akira to safety.

Akira, even if his mind was that of the thirty-one-year-old man Goro was married to, was in a teenage body that had been pumped with the poison the police dared to call “truth serum”. He looked barely conscious, and Goro doubted he could easily stand on his own. Luckily, Akira was light, and young Goro Akechi frequently exercised, his body fairly muscular from bouldering and cycling. And carrying out hits in the Metaverse.

Goro clenched his jaw. _Don’t think about that. Keep it together._

Stepping around the table, Goro crouched down and reached behind him to slip his hands under Akira’s thighs and hoist him up. Akira complied with the motion, wrapping his arms tightly around Goro’s neck and pressing his stomach urgently against Goro’s back. It reminded Goro so much of the tender, familiar way his husband had held him mere moments ago in the kitchen that his breath caught a little. His grip on Akira now was hesitant and shaky. He had to be strong for Akira, but he felt like his knees would give way at any moment. Nothing sounded more appealing than curling up into the fetal position on the floor and covering his ears until the nightmare stopped, but this wasn’t a nightmare, and this wasn’t just about him. Swallowing the rising bile in his throat, Goro slinked out of the interrogation room with Akira in tow. 

The underground facility was sparsely guarded, but Goro knew that two teenagers in school uniforms would be all too easy to spot. Additionally, if the assumption he was working under was correct, that this memory, fantasy, or whatever was real, then there was a chance that Sae Nijima would be returning shortly to help Akira escape. Running into her would complicate things. He couldn’t exactly explain to her that he meant Akira no harm and was actually over a decade older than he appeared. 

His only real option was to slip away into the palace. The danger would be lessened, with only a few cognitions lingering around, but going back into that horrible world voluntarily… 

The cutting, staccato sound of heeled shoes cut into his thoughts, and Goro froze where he stood. That had to be Sae. He pulled out his phone again, almost dropping it as his hands shook. 

“Sae… Nijima…” he whispered. “Courthouse. Casino.” All he had to do was tap the screen, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it with dread crawling up his neck. 

“Goro…”

“I know,” Goro snapped. “I…”

Akira always seemed to be able to read him, and even in his incapacitated state of mind, Akira nuzzled his face into Goro’s hair, his warm breath reminding Goro what was at stake. Goro heaved out a breath. He wasn’t alone. He had to do this for Akira. Goro tapped the screen and braced himself against the wave of unease that flashed through his mind as they shifted into the Metaverse. The sound of Sae Nijima’s approaching heels was cut off, replaced by a sort of dull tremor of whispers that hung like a thin curtain in the air. 

If he listened in the Metaverse, there was always noise. That was one reason he’d preferred his helmet back then. If he couldn't hear the thoughts and noises of those around him, he didn’t have to think about those he was affecting with the ruin he brought. Back then, he’d learned to tune the whispers out quite well. Now, they sounded like shouts. 

They needed a way out, and Goro didn’t want to linger there any longer than he had to. He began walking down the hallway, slowly so as to not disturb Akira. They didn’t meet anyone on the way to the elevator, but once they were out of the underground facility, Goro heard an officer around a corner speaking instructions to “detain the escapee” frantically into a walkie-talkie. Akira shivered, clutching on impossibly tighter. They still had a few more hallways to traverse to get out of the station and into the palace proper. 

“It’s okay,” Goro whispered in a voice he hoped would be soothing. “We’ll be okay. Just a little further.” Akira let out a little whimper against Goro’s neck. “It’s okay… it’s okay…” Goro whispered constantly as Akira squeezed his shoulders and they snuck through the mostly empty facility together. The reassurances were as much for Goro as they were for Akira. Talking was helping. Just focusing on Akira’s warm, tangible presence was helping.

When they reached the double doors that led out, Goro readjusted his grip on Akira to push open the door with one hand. The neon lights of the Casino that stood tall just a few blocks away taunted him with its bright colors and distant upbeat music. Goro picked up the pace, passingly aware of the magenta footprints he was leaving in his wake. He couldn’t risk suddenly appearing in the middle of the crowd, not if it was 2016 and he was widely recognizable and not if he had the most wanted teenager in Japan clinging to his back. When they reached the entry point, an empty alley just to the side of the courthouse, Goro felt Akira tap his shoulder, silently asking to be let down. 

Goro knelt down carefully and set down Akira’s legs, guiding him to sit with his back against the wall of the courthouse. It was dark out, and though a few people passed idly on the street, no one looked down the alley to discover their makeshift fortress. For a moment, they were safe. Goro’s composure broke and his knees gave out. Before he knew what was happening, he had draped himself over Akira, pulling him into a fierce embrace and resting his chin on his neck, finally unleashing the onslaught of tears he’d felt surging against the floodgates since he came to with a gun in his hand. 

Goro wasn’t the one who could have died. He wasn’t the one in mortal danger. But he was weak –– always had been, though he tried his best to hide from and overcome that fact. He sobbed silently into the crook of Akira’s neck, feeling his chest heave as he carried the weight of the world. 

“Goro…” Akira murmured as he settled into his arms. 

“How did this happen?” Goro whispered. “It’s… too cruel. You… you shouldn’t have to––”

“You shouldn’t either,” Akira said. “You got me out. We’re okay now.”

“N-no we’re not…” Goro said. “I… want to go home.”

“I’m here,” Akira said. “I’m right here.”

Even here, out of the underground holding cell, they weren’t safe. Goro’s mind flashed with all the horrors of this rotten time. The police would be searching every nook and cranny of Japan for Akira as soon as he was discovered missing, which would be very soon. Masayoshi Shido himself was still perched on his throne of pride and chaos, his fingers in every corner of Tokyo. Goro leaned in impossibly closer and let his tears pool in the fabric of Akira’s blazer. The November wind stung against Goro’s face like a wall of needles, but he focused on their shared warmth and let himself cry in Akira’s arms, imagining they were back home in bed together, and Akira’s soothing grip would be all it took to wake Goro up and pull him away from all the traumas of “back then”. 

But Goro was still wide awake. 

**Author's Note:**

> i was gonna call this "it's rewind time" and honestly i maybe i should've to make it hurt a little less
> 
> whoops
> 
> please comment! <3


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